Business and finance

Business and finance play a crucial role in transitioning towards a clean energy future, both in managing their own climate risks and seizing climate-related opportunities. Until relatively recently, businesses were attributed limited responsibility for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.

There is now a growing realisation that such 'business-as-usual' approaches to climate change come with financial, social and environmental costs. Stakeholders – including investors, employees, customers, suppliers, regulators and communities – are putting increasing pressure on business to act. Risks to businesses include physical climate risks, such as damage to assets or disruption to supply chains, transition risks from policy and investment moves towards a low-carbon economy, as well as reputational and liability risks.

Climate change also offers significant opportunities. These include benefits from efficiency and cost savings, investments in renewable energies, new product and service development, access to new markets, resilient supply chains and the overall financial stability of the world economy. Private climate finance is also essential to support the mitigation and adaptation needs of societies to address climate change, particularly those in developing countries.

Program Lead

Associate Professor Ben Neville, Department of Management and Marketing, Faculty of Business and Economics; Deputy Director – Strategic Partnerships and Community Impact, Melbourne Climate Futures

Early career researcher co-lead

Dr Franz Wohlgezogen, Senior Lecturer in Management and Marketing

Grants and Resources

ARC DP22 project on ‘Advancing Investor Action on Energy Transition’Scenario analysis and company reporting

SPIPA project reviewing learnings from the European Sustainable Finance Taxonomy